Eileen Shiel HermanClarkstown South 1981

Any discussion of the premier girls’ distance runners in Rockland history would have to include Eileen Shiel. Over her four-year career, the Clarkstown South ace captured 14 Rockland County titles, including a four-year sweep of the indoor mile and outdoor mile/1,500 meters. She also annexed 12 Section 9 Class A championships, including one in cross country, and set County records outdoors in the 1,500 (4:42.5) and mile (5:04.8) and indoors at 880 yards, 1,000 yards, 1,500 meters and the mile.

Eileen was one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Rockland schoolgirl runners of the era. Competing against such leading ladies as Laurel Gilhooly of Albertus, Nanuet’s Janet Pietropaolo, North Rockland’s Jeanne Drexler, and Lisette and Monica Hautau of Tappan Zee, Eileen lost only four times in individual events to Rockland County runners. Records fell faster than an inept hurdler when Eileen took the track: She established more than a dozen County marks, oftentimes breaking her own records, as well as four Section 9 standards.

She still ranks in the Rockland top 10 all-time in the outdoor mile (5:04.8) and 5,000 (No. 3, 18:18.3); indoor 1,500 (4:46.7), mile (5:09.0) and two mile (11:15.6), and for Van Cortlandt Park’s 5K course (No. 3, 18:33.0). In cross country, she won the 1980 Section 9 Class A meet at Bear Mountain in a swift 18:01.4 and finished fourth at the state Federation meet.

A self-motivated athlete, Eileen had already been running on her own for a year by the time she joined the Felix Festa Junior High team as a seventh grader. She then followed her sister Maureen, who is older by two years, onto the South track team. Her younger sister, Cathy, joined two years later. All were coached in track by Ray Roswell.

“Ray Roswell was an amazing coach,” says Eileen, who was a team tri-captain along with Laura Gormley and Kathy Barnes. “He is why I achieved what I did. He was very meticulous about workouts but he made it so much fun. Running with my sisters and for Ray Roswell was such an enjoyable experience.”

Eileen’s talent was evident from the outset. In her first high school track race as a freshman – the Bishop Loughlin Games 1,000-yard run – she set a County record (2:46.7) and finished second to Joetta Clark of New Jersey, a nationally ranked half-miler and later a four-time Olympian. Many more successes followed for the Viking standout. One of the most memorable was her triumphant triple at the ’78 County meet, sweeping the 880, mile and two-mile relay after sitting out the whole week with a strained hamstring.

“I undertrained, then I had the best day of my career,” says Eileen, who earned the award for outstanding female athlete of the meet that day. “I always tended to overtrain. Every workout I did to exhaustion. I didn’t know then that it’s better to be undertrained a little and have something extra for the race.” Her training memories include the arduous 10-mile runs around the Lake DeForest reservoir and hill repeats up the steep McCarthy Way incline with good friend Terry Moran and other teammates.

Eileen received a partial scholarship to the University of Virginia, which she chose over Holy Cross. She had visited Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., with Gilhooly, who wound up going there. “I absolutely agonized over the decision between joining Laurel at Holy Cross or running at UVA,” Eileen says. Her choice proved judicious, however, at least in her freshman year, when Virginia won the inaugural NCAA Div. I cross country championship, held in Los Angeles. Eileen was the No. 8 runner on the powerful Cavalier squad, which included the talented Welch sisters, Lesley and Lisa. [The following year Lesley Welch won the individual crown and Virginia repeated as team champion.]

Eileen elected to forgo track and cross country after her freshman year. She graduated from Virginia in 1985 with a degree in fine arts and then went to work designing figurative art sculptures at the Tallix Fine Arts Foundry in Beacon, N.Y. After a few years at the foundry, she decided to channel her creative design skills into the more commercially enriching field of engineering. She has been a project engineer at Presray Corp. in Wassaic, N.Y., for more than a decade, designing commercial building products.

While working at the foundry, Eileen met her husband, David, to whom she’s been married 20 years. Ironically, David has a degree in engineering and is now an artist, while Eileen has a degree in fine arts and is now an engineer.

Eileen has received abundant support throughout her running career. She reserves special praise for her parents, Patrick and Patricia, who provided spirited encouragement for her and her sisters, and she treasures the sage advice of good friend Richard Salerno, her running partner during high school and a fellow Virginia alumnus. Salerno mapped out a marathon training program that Eileen and David have followed successfully, completing marathons in Burlington, Vt., in 2006 and in Philadelphia last November. They plan to tackle Burlington again later this month, and have signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., in October.

“We want to run marathons in all the major cities of the world,” says Eileen, who is 46 and resides in Wingdale, N.Y. “What better way to enjoy those cities. We’re doing it for the pure joy of running. It’s an affirmation of life, to feel the vitality and know you can cover the distance. I still get the adrenaline rush. I’m enjoying running like never before.”